Harry Potter Price War

I read today’s paper on the price war over the final Harry Potter book.

Source: By MANJIT KAUR

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysia Bookseller Association’s 100-odd members nationwide will meet next week to decide their next course of action over the Harry Potter price war that has erupted here.

“The worst case scenario would be to return the books to the publisher,” said its president Cheah Thye Wee.

MPH, Popular Bookstore and Times on Friday announced they would not sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after Carrefour and Tesco hypermarkets advertised that they were selling the books at RM69.90.

The bookstores, with a total of 100 outlets in Malaysia, have priced theirs at RM109.90.

They said they were protesting the “indiscriminate price discount,” adding that it was not fair of distributor Penguin Books to “allow hypermarkets to sell such a popular book when they are not in the book business.”

Penguin Singapore and Malaysia managing director Eddy Teo said the hypermarkets would incur losses by selling the novel at a cheaper price, pointing out that their purchase price was actually higher.

He said there would be no replenishment on top of the opening order due to unavailability of stocks and the British publisher of the novel, Bloomsbury, had no plans for reprints now.

Cheah said his association was shocked and disappointed with the price under-cutting of the seventh and final book in British author J.K. Rowling’s bestselling series.

Hypermarkets should be giving discounts on milk power, rice and other necessities that benefited a larger population of the country, and not use bestsellers to attract customers to their outlets, he said on Saturday.

He said those in the business had waited for two years for the book to be released, and it would have been understandable if the hypermarkets sold the book for RM69.90 a year later, but to do so on the day of its launch was “ridiculous.”

He strongly supported the decision of the four major bookstore chains to not sell the book.

“We will stand by them,” he added.

After going through that I must say I’m siding with the Hypermarkets. To me, the Bookseller Association is acting childishly.

Like an earlier report says, this is a free market and as such, it’s up to the Hypermarkets to sell what they want at whatever price they think will make a profit. Mind you, profit here could have been in the long run.

Who gives a $hit when Carrefour sells them at half the price? For their strategy, it could mean that they are planning to recoup the loss later in terms of increased patron to their establishments.

Likewise, for a supposedly bookstore to NOT sell Harry Potter books on it’s biggest worldwide launch just speaks of ’stupidity’ all over. Imagine the loss of retail, the loss of future patrons, the ruined relationship with their customers when they cancelled all HP events speaks badly of their PR skills.

I had always believed forming Unions or Association always make it’s member feel protected. That they had a sense of belonging with care and support of it’s members (HAHAHAHA). In other words, pampered. That’s why they felt the need to cry when they got undercut in price.

Speaking of which, saying that Carrefour should not sell books is absurd. Who dictates what they can or cannot sell? The association’s members? I don’t think so. Neither is there any law that says that.

Hypermarkets should be giving discounts on milk power, rice and other necessities that benefited a larger population of the country, and not use bestsellers to attract customers to their outlets, he said

See (above)? Plain stupidity at work. A discount is a discount, no matter for what items on sale. If I’m the owner of Carrefour, I’d probably retort something like “Bookstores should sell books and leave the audio CD’s to studios.”

:)

I’ve seen through some other blog post that “to help the bookstore in the long run, we should buy from them and not hypermarts” or something to that matter, but most of them seem to forget that demand is also a factor in economics. Hypermarts stock up the latest and best sellers but people still do visit a bookstore for other non-mainstream books.

So what bookstores have now been delegated to selling non-mainstream books? No one is prohibiting them from branching out to the online market, e-books, audio-books or even selling Harry Potter fan fiction for a change.

The fact is, if they those 4 bookstores quite whining and sold HP:TDH as before, they would still have made a profit off them. Haven’t they heard the news of hypermarts not having enough stock? The MidValley for example, no stock in Carrefour would mean people would go back to MPH for their RM109.90 books!

PS: This topic brings me to another issue I wanted to rant earlier. Why the heck is a supposedly children’s book on sale for RM109.90? Who are they kidding? I won’t even buy it at that price. Not that Wikipedia’s entry doesn’t sum up the synopsis nicely.

Tell you what, after their meeting next week (which the agenda would probably cover the loss of profit over their childishness), they would resume selling the books. Afterall they do have loads in stores that need to go somewhere.